


Patty Cake, Patty Cake

by audreycritter



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: AU of AU, Bruce Wayne is a Good Dad, Drunk Driving, Gen, Tumblr Prompt, broken arm, minor car wreck, shared AU, the batboys are little, the sandbox, tim drake is a baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24147301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Kiran Devabhaktuni wrecks his car on the lawn of Wayne Manor and thinks his life is over.Then, a baby pats his cheek.
Comments: 44
Kudos: 535





	Patty Cake, Patty Cake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [helplesslynerdy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helplesslynerdy/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the sandbox](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737358) by [helplesslynerdy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helplesslynerdy/pseuds/helplesslynerdy). 



> A shared universe with helplesslynerdy in which Bruce adopts all the batkids while they are much younger, but is still Batman. It's called the Sandbox.

Kiran Devabhaktuni was 26 years old, a medical student at Gotham U, still a little drunk, and very, very, extremely dead. He was sitting on the grass-- perfectly trim, perfectly green-- staring at his car smashed into shrubbery and a low wall, the passenger side tyre flat and bumper smashed in. They were as ruined as his future.

He could see it now, drenched with petrol and on fire. He’d be suspended, his student visa would be revoked, he’d go back to England and have to live with…

Kiran swallowed, hard, to keep the bile down. He’d already thrown up once, in the car, on the passenger seat, before he’d scrambled out the driver’s window and landed on the gravel beside the road. The bonnet had been smoking, black plumes hissing out, and he’d stumbled back while two little boys emerged atop the shubbery screeching in delight like some strange, incoherent avenging angels.

It had taken his still-not-sober brain a bit too long to process that they weren’t bizarre, floating bush creatures, but were standing on the stone wall the bush had swallowed some years ago, watching the car with boyish, pyromanic glee.

A harsh bark of an order behind them made Kiran flinch, and both of them jump backward. Kiran tried standing and only succeeded in falling a few feet further away, into the grass, where he still sat. The gate several meters down the road swung open, and a man strode out with a child on his hip, and two more boys jumping along at his heels like eager puppies.

“Are you alright?” he called, sounding more concerned than angry. Kiran blinked and stared at the car, and then at the man. He looked familiar.

“You’re bleeding,” one boy announced, leaning close to his face. Kiran startled and winced, cradling his arm automatically when pain shot up into his shoulder.

“I’m…drunk,” he said, honestly, because his life was already over and he’d learned early on it was best to get the worst part over soonest. His da’s lecturing was still ringing in his head from the phone call earlier; the alcohol hadn’t drowned it out, after all. He’d ruined his life and his brain hadn’t even gotten properly numb yet.

“Dick, come here,” the man said, gesturing for the taller of the two boys to back away from the car. The smoke died with a final fizzle and the boy looked plainly disappointed. He didn’t go back to the man, but instead yelled, “I’ll get Alfred!” and climbed over the wall rather than go back to the gate.

The boy closer to Kiran prodded experimentally at Kiran’s forehead and Kiran shifted away.

“The car might blow up,” he said. “Tell me where it hurts. I’m five.”

“Are not!” a yell came from over the wall. “You’re four and you know it!”

“Almost!” the boy leaned his head back to howl into the air. He looked back at the man. “I don’t think he talks, Daddy.”

“Jason, give him some space. He’s probably in shock. Did you hit your head?”

“I was going to be a sodding neurosurgeon,” Kiran said faintly, as things began to truly sink in. “I…smashed up your gate.” He put his forehead on his arm, propped on his knee, to let a wave of dizziness-- concussion and failure alike-- wash over him.

“We’ll call an ambulance. How much were you drinking? Can I look at your eyes?”

“Vodka. Not a full bottle,” Kiran said, automatically. A screaming lecture on telling the truth was mixing with a rotation lecture on accurate charting in the ER in his head, making him feel like his brain was full of tangled and knotted strings. “Please don’t call an ambulance. I’ll walk.”

“You’ll walk,” the man echoed. “Hm. Let me see your eyes.”

Kiran tried to open them, and winced and squinted. The sun was brighter than he remembered it being a moment ago, but they adjusted slowly.

“You broke my wall,” the man said, when Kiran was looking at him, and the man was studying Kiran’s eyes. He’d always thought it was funny, how you could study someone’s eyes and still not be looking at them, the way they might be looking at you. It made him feel now a bit like an insect, squirming under a magnifying glass and tweezers. The man’s voice had gotten a little harder, and then it went to positive ice. “You could have hit one of my children.”

“I know,” Kiran tried to choke out. His throat was closing up. “I’m sorry. I’m really…I’m…I’m really bloody sorry.”

He had to wrench his chin down, because his eyes were filling with tears that weren’t from the too-familiar pain in his head, and he thought he’d crossed enough lines today without adding crying in front of a stranger to the list.

“Do you drink and drive often?” the man asked, and Kiran could feel him moving back, see his feet moving around the car as he studied it.

“No,” Kiran managed. “Just the once, so far. Started off with a sodding bang, innit?”

There was a dry, humorless chuckle in response; a quiet aside to one of the boys.

Kiran wanted to cry. He wanted to lie down in the grass and weep until his throat stopped hurting, until the sky was dark. The worst part was that out of all the things he struggled to understand how his father expected him to control, this one was solidly and clearly his fault. If only he hadn’t answered the phone today, if only he hadn’t decided to go for a drive, if only he hadn’t pried the top off a bottle of vodka and told himself ‘just one sip, then I’ll go home and finish it.’

His chest was a blackhole, sucking in his future and the what-ifs and the narrow misses until it was a weight so heavy he nearly couldn’t breathe. His breath hitched and he felt the oddest sensation on his cheek.

Then again. It was a little pat, over and over. A tiny, chubby hand.

He drew in a slow breath and looked up. Serious baby eyes looked at him, wide with concern, as the toddling baby patted his cheek in an attempt at consoling.

“Tim,” the man said, “don’t bother him. He’s not feeling very well.”

The man sounded kind, and Kiran suddenly understood why. It was because the baby was there. He was just saving his real anger for when the kids were inside, and the police showed up, and Kiran didn’t think his roommate would appreciate a bail call so that was out.

“Nuh,” the baby Tim said, shaking his head. He kept patting, little soft pats like Kiran was a frightened animal that needed soothing. Kiran was frozen.

“Thanks, mate,” Kiran managed to say.

The baby Tim sat in the grass and moved his hand to Kiran’s knee, watching his face carefully as he patted. “Better?” he asked, after another minute.

“Yeah,” Kiran said quietly. It was not entirely a lie.

The baby didn’t move from his spot, watching, and if Kiran had been any less miserable he might have found it creepy. Instead, it was just bizarrely reassuring.

“If you think you can get up, we might as well go inside and sort this out,” the man said. “I’m Bruce Wayne.”

Bruce Wayne.

Kiran had smashed up a car on Bruce Wayne’s lawn.

He was going to sodding pass out.

Somehow, he managed to stand, while the inside of his skull screamed from terror and pain.

“Kiran Devabhaktuni,” he heard himself say. “I really am sorry. I don’t have to come in.”

He made the mistake of moving his arm, and he was drenched in white hot pain that muted even the ache in his head. His head that was still positively swimming from vodka, and when had he eaten last? How long ago had he answered the phone?

The man’s arm was around him and he was crying, sod it all, he was crying and he had the distant, detached thought that maybe it was possible to have two worst days in the same lifetime. Later, would he look back at the day where he flushed his entire future down the drain and remember with a flush of shame that he’d also cried on Bruce Wayne? Or would that just fade into the general miasma of misery, then?

“I think my arm is broken,” he mumbled, while swaying.

“I think so, too. You went as gray as a ghost,” Bruce Wayne said. “Jay-lad, go tell Alfred to get a splint. I think he’s coming out with Dick now.”

Half an hour later, Kiran was sitting at a kitchen table with his arm splinted and iced. He had water, and a cup of black coffee he was forcing himself to drink despite hating the taste. Bruce and a man dressed as household staff had a quiet conversation that sounded very little like the sort of discussion oen had with staff. The baby, Tim, was kneeling on a chair near Kiran’s and every so often would pat his uninjured arm. He kept staring at Kiran’s face with a searching, anxious little look, until Kiran finally said, “Look, mate, I’ll be alright,” just to see if it would make the baby feel any better. Tim seemed satisfied by this, and the pinched worry faded but the occasional pats didn’t stop.

Kiran waited, his own tension still high and nauseating.

Did it take the police so long to make it out here from Gotham?

“Well,” Bruce Wayne said, coming back to the table a moment later. One of the boys-- Dick?-- was climbing on him like he was a jungle gym, and he stoically ignored it, and let it happen. Kiran found it downright bewildering. “Alfred is going to take you to the hospital to have that arm set, and your head looked at. We’ll have someone tow the car. We think, considering the circumstances, that it would be too much of a mess to report this or file charges. If Alfred stays with you until they admit you or discharge you, will you think about going to AA? He can get you a number.”

Kiran blinked at him. And blinked again. He didn’t…”I don’t understand,” he said bluntly.

“It’s a second chance, Mr. Devabhaktuni.”

“I don’t…”

Get second chances, he wanted to say.

He swallowed.

“I’ll take the number,” he said quietly, instead. He wanted to duck his head but he made himself look Bruce Wayne in the face when he said, “Thank you,” in the loudest whisper he could manage. “It’s just…it’s Kiran. Just Kiran.”

“What happened today?” Bruce Wayne asked, pulling out a chair.

“I got a phone call,” Kiran said, feeling he owed him that much at least. “I don’t get along with my da.”

“Hm,” Bruce Wayne said. “Maybe don’t answer the phone, next time.”

The boy who had been climbing settled on Bruce Wayne’s lap, kissed his cheek, and jumped off. “I’m sorry your car didn’t explode,” he said earnestly. “But it’s probably good that it didn’t.”

“Mine,” Tim said, patting Kiran’s arm again.

“No,” Bruce Wayne said, reaching across the table and moving Tim’s hand. The baby gave him a look of profound irritation and gently, intentionally, moved his hand back. “You don’t claim people,” Bruce Wayne said, despite this small rebellion.

“After nap?”

“No, not even after a nap. We’re not bargaining, Tim.”

“Oh. Please?”

Kiran was quiet through this, watching with a desperately silent and aching hunger he didn’t quite understand, until suddenly he did. This wasn’t how families sounded, not to him. A wave of irrational hatred sparked hot, followed almost immediately by an sour self-loathing. The little hand patted his shoulder again.

“No,” Bruce Wayne said. “Not even for please.”

“Mine friend,” Tim said, emphasizing.

“That’s alright,” Bruce conceded. “If Kiran doesn’t mind.”

“Not at all, mate,” Kiran said, feeling choked and a little lightheaded at the whiplash of the day. “That’s bloody fine with me.”


End file.
